Insect Themed Learning Trays for Toddlers

 Sharing with you what's on our shelves and activity trays for the next two weeks: Insect Theme.

FREE Leaf Silhouettes Learning Materials

I love seeing our printables getting used and being shared on Instagram! For the past years, our Free Insect Silhouettes have been really really popular and getting used by tons of teachers and homeschoolers. Because it became so popular and a favorite, I decided to publish our Leaf Silhouettes as freebies to all my subscribers.

9 Best Insect Science Activities on Instagram

You all know that I love Instagram! Aside from Pinterest, this is one of the best places to look for inspirations for home and school educational activities.   Recently, I have the courage to ask my followers to join my occasional  roundup posts based on the themes that we have for "home" school.  I'm so happy that there tons who participated and with that, I'm happy to share 9 inspiration activities amazing accounts.  Be sure to check their websites and Instagram account for more inspirations!

Insect Themed Lesson Plans for Kindergarten to First Grade

We are about to conclude our INSECT UNIT which we have been working on for the past two weeks and I am so happy to finally share the lesson plan that I made for my Kindergarten.  Now, though this is designed for my almost 6 year old boy, this unit study is also appropriate for kids from 5 years and older.  We have done tons of identification and sensorial activities previously on this subject area and this year, we’re doing some advanced work.

Safari Toob Theme Teaching Resources

I am so excited to bring to you 16+ activity learning packs to go along with your favorite Safari Toob educational toys.  As you all know, we've been collecting these animal figure sets for a decade now and has been a helpful learning tool in our homeschool journey. With my experience in homeschooling and designing activities to go along with our toob sets, I decided to publish the printables I made for these toys.  With these printable packs, you and your kids can exhaust the use of these animal toobs and go beyond the typical matching activity.

For more details on some of the themed packs you can also check some of the posts below:

• Insect Theme Toob Printable Learning Materials
• Farm Theme Toob Printable Learning Materials
• Ocean Theme Toob Printable Learning Materials

Insect Theme Toob Printable Learning Materials

Here’s a comprehensive activity pack with your Safari Toob Insect set.  This INSECT TOOB LEARNING PACK learning material contains tons of extension activities that include science, language, math and fine motor skills.  And, of course, this learning material uses HIGH-QUALITY REAL IMAGES of the animals!

Introducing Life Cycles to Younger Kids

In our home, springtime brings a renewed focus on the topic of life cycles. As a parent, I am often asked how to introduce the concept of metamorphosis, larva, pupa and more to young children who may not be able to visualize these processes. It is a fascinating subject that is easy to understand. I begin by telling engaging stories that help children understand that just like humans, baby animals come from their mothers and fathers. Some animals start their life as eggs and then undergo a gradual transformation that ultimately leads to adulthood. 

To help explain these concepts more effectively, we use a variety of learning materials that bring these life cycles to life for children. As we follow the "Montessori" philosophy in our homeschool, we prefer to use hands-on learning experiences that allow children to explore and learn in a natural way. Whether it's using specialized learning materials or observing real-life examples in nature, we strive to make learning about life cycles as engaging and interactive as possible.

Learning about Insects for Home and School

Assembling unit studies is one of the things that I like doing.  Last summer, we worked on insects and I made a compilation of work which the boys did over the years on learning about these amazing animals.  You will absolutely love these ideas and they are perfect for kids from 5 to 10 years old.

FREE Insect Counting Mats

Due to a lot of requests from our readers, I’m sharing our FREE Insect Jars Counting Mats which we used in our Indoor Garden Play Bug Counting Activity.

Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant

This is a follow-up activity on our Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant.

After learning about the parts of a plant, Vito and I talked about how plants grow.  We walked around the estate and identified baby plants, some of them were just actually sprouting off the ground and this amazed Vito.  We also read the book How A Seed Grows to go along with our activity, this is a really good book!  The book illustrates the different stages of a plant’s (bean plant) life, from the preparations to planting up to the the part where the grown plant needs to be moved into a ground soil.  We have a few of these Read and Find Out books and Mavi loves to use them as reference.  Anyway, aside from the book, I also used the very beautiful Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant from Safari Toob and a homemade life cycle cards (this are now available in my shop, Early Childhood Life Cycle Mats).

Montessori Inspired Insect Activities for Preschoolers

Here’s a summary of our insect activities for the past week.  Most of these materials are old and reused and many of our activities were not planned but are based on Vito's interest because bugs and other tiny creatures appeared earlier than expected.  Hope this post will give you some ideas on learning activities about these creatures!

Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities

Language activities are a favourite in the house now as Vito’s interest in reading has peaked.  We are using language objects more often to practise letter sounds through games (aside from sandpaper letters).  These language objects that we have were collected through the years, starting from Mavi’s time and it has been very useful now in Vito’s journey on beginning reading.

What are Insects?

Here’s a simple way of telling whether an animal is an insect:  has 6 legs (with or without wings).  This is something new to Vito, the word “insect”.  He usually calls them with their real names like flies, bees, dragonflies, etc. but is not familiar with their category.  Now, this is the first time that I introduced this concept, so he struggled a little bit until we started counting the legs!

Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of Insects

Vito and I have been talking about insects in the past few days.  I mentioned in my previous post, the current interest on insects was brought about by their sudden appearance.  So far he has encountered quite a few already like garden ants, flies, wasps and bees, and bugs. It’s a shame we haven’t seen grasshoppers and dragonflies here, I used to catch and collect them as a child (back in Asia). Anyway, since our last activity on Farm Families, Vito still loves to learn about mommies, daddies, and babies, thus I introduced the life cycle of insects early on in our activities.  Unlike my past activities with Mavi, this one is very simple and straight forward.

Seen here are the life cycles figures of:  butterfly, bee, ant, and ladybird.

Collection of Color Learning Activities for Preschoolers

Happy Valentines Day everyone!  I hope that your day is as colorful as my post today. 
For the month of February,  my entry for the 12 Months More of Montessori Learning is all about how we learn and explore colors at home.   If you are looking for more ideas on how to extend your color activities at home, then this is definitely for you!  At 39 months, Vito is knowledgeable of all basic colors and I just have to nurture this knowledge through planned and spontaneous activities.

LEARN COLORS THROUGH NATURE FINDS
Last year, Vito and I started bringing home “nature finds”.  This was the time when he turned 3 years old and stopped mouthing objects.  We would bring simple things like sticks, pinecones, flowers or rocks, then placed them in a basket for more exploration.  We discussed the objects’ texture, shape, weight (heavy or light), size (big or small) and of course the color/s.  To simply demonstrate how to extend the “nature table” activity by focusing on colors, Vito and I collected and glued some flowers, leaves and sticks on a white cardstock and then matched them to their nearest colors in the Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) .


Because they are placed in a white background, Vito can easily identify the color tablets closest to the petals, leaves and sticks.  This is a simple activity that’s so easy to replicate.  You can work on rocks, different hues of leafy greens, flowers and more.

COLOR GRADING
We are now using  Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) for this activity.  This is a sensorial material for visual discrimination and perfection of colors.  I was a little bit hesitant to purchase it at first so we used a DIY.   If you skim through my blog, you might have read about our previous color grading activity using water and food coloring. 



I will talk about the Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) in a separate post but for now, here’s Vito trying out the yellow color (we worked on it one color at a time).  We talked about the dark and light yellow… and on how it gets lighter or darker.

COUNTERS
I love Learning Resources’ counters and we use them a lot at home.  We extended its use not just for counting but for color sorting and fine motor skills activities too!  What you see here are the Mini Motors and the Backyard Bugs counters. Vito arranged the counters on their corresponding cut-out colored strips.



IN FOODS
We worked on fruits and vegetables last year too and sorted out their colors. Vito loves our play pretend Farmers Market Color Sorting Set and he would often sort them according to colors.  But you don’t need to use this, you can use whatever you have in your kitchen. By the way, in this activity we are using the Montessori Color Tablets (2nd Box).

 


RAINBOW COLORS
Nothing beats learning colors through the rainbow!  We love our Large Grimm's Rainbow Stacker to pieces and the boys are using this in so many ways other than stacking it and learning colors!   I love that it provides different hues of red, green and blue.  Because Vito is constantly exposed to this toy, he’s able to identify the dark and light green, red and blue.  Mavi even made a LEGO Bricks version of this rainbow! 



ARTS
Of course, there’s the paints, watercolors and markers!  Explore colors using these inexpensive art materials.  We are not yet talking about primary and secondary colors, but occasionally I would show Vito that we can combine colors to produce another color.
COLORS IN BOOKS
There are so many books on colors but this book is our favourite.  Vito enjoyed this the most because he loves flipping the transparent pages of the book to see the result when colors combine.  Colours (My First Discoveries) is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers!


COLORS IN SCIENCE
This was an experiment we did last year and Vito loved it!  This is one of the many ways we show our kids how secondary colors are formed. See how Vito studied color mixing through this post "Color Mixing: Green, Orange and Purple".

EVERYWHERE
Colors are everywhere! Don’t limit yourself to the ones you have at home (objects).  Go out and explore the colors in forests, beaches, parks and just about anywhere… and it’s free!

Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Instagram or Twitter for updates!  More learning materials at Pinay Homeschooler Shop.

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This post is part of the 12 Months More of Montessori which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs participating in the 12 Months More of Montessori that you should visit:

Easy Flower Science Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten | Natural Beach Living

Montessori-Inspired Skip Counting for Kids {Spring Printables} | The Natural Homeschool

How to Prepare a Montessori-Style Lenten Tray | Living Montessori Now

Montessori Practical Life - Caring for a Plant | Happy Mama’s Hive

Toddler Butterfly Theme for Spring | The Kavanaugh Report

Collection of Color Learning Activities for Preschoolers | The Pinay Homeschooler

Montessori-inspired Plant Activities with Free Printables | Every Star is Different

Montessori Flower Arranging: Practical Life Skills (Free Printable) | Christian Montessori Network

PB&J Bird Seed Ornaments | Sugar, Spice & Glitter

8 Must-try Insect Activities With Free Montessori-inspired Printables| Uno Zwei Tutu

Hands on butterfly themed learning activities | Welcome to Mommyhood

Pre-reading Using Montessori Language Objects

I’ve been showing you glimpses of our Montessori Language Objects for the past few months but haven’t published our entire collection. So for this 12 Months of Montessori Series, I’d like to showcase our Language Objects (beginning letters) from A to Z!  I’m giving you ideas on what to collect and where to get them (affiliate links). But before anything else, I wanted to give credits to Mavi for assembling most of these objects for me.  As young as 1.5years old, Mavi has this unusual interest with letters and reading.  He showed signs early on and by 36 months, he’s able to read CVC books.  Anyway, this “Montessori Language Objects” is the same method I used with Mavi 5 years ago and it totally worked for us. 

To those of you who are unfamiliar of this method, it’s simply a collection of 3-dimensional miniature objects with names that matches the beginning sound or beginning letter for each letter of the alphabet.  This is one of the most popular methods in a Montessori environment for early reading.  Vito is doing very well with his letter sounds using these objects!

Without much further ado, here’s my collection of objects which I started collecting 5 years ago.